I should think that if the information commissioner "pokes kids" he would probably be greatly in favour of "social networking privacy"

So people know when I'm born, and the city I live in thanks thanks to Facebook, and if I want them to, they can look at pictures of me. My god, I'm going to be cloned!!

That's a shit load better than the 25 million folk who've just had their full identities including bank numbers lost in the damn post....

Seriously, there's far worse "data protection" concerns all over the shop.

This is what I've never understood about "social networking sites" -- any off-hand comment or ill-conceived confession is, effectively, tied to your name for life -- how is that in any way conducive to "socialising?".

There are two definitions of "socialising": the one I and probably you use, which is along the lines of "participating in activities involving acquaintances and friends in order to fulfill one's need for company, to make said activities more enjoyable, and to meet people who may become of use for future friendship, love and/or business".

Facebook is behind a growing use of the alternative defintion, however, which is "any one or more of various rituals involving other people whose purpose is to destroy all or part of a person's identity as an individual and replace it with a group identity. Rituals may include but are not limited to: self-harm through excessive drinking, pursuit of members of the relevant sex who hold absolutely no interest to the individual, meaningless sexual intercourse, listening to boring people talk nonsense at business seminars, and participating in irrelevant 'team-building activities'."

Society, as in the thing that Thatcher prematurely declared dead (would that it had been), much prefers the second definition. Rituals mean predictability, group identity means you can pull one string and make an entire population dance. And Facebook is making it easier than it ever has been. Your identity on Facebook basically consists entirely of pictures of what you've been doing with groups; your status depends on how many other people you've given up a part of your identity to; the word "friend" is redefined from the vague and opaque "someone whose company you enjoy" to the more easily recordable "someone whose invitation you couldn't think of a good reason to turn down".

Friendship is an emotional relationship that is essentially random and indefinable. That makes it useless to advertisers and bureaucrats. Facebook Friendship is much easier: it's "B is A's friend, and I am A's friend, and I went to C and did D with B at 9:12pm Friday morning (click here for 30 images as proof), therefore B is my friend." This is more open, more transparent, more conducive to a prosperous and stable society. It's a great improvement on the old 'friendship'. Unless you have a soul, of course.

Social networking is the anti-social shut ins way of try convincing the

world that they are not actually an anti-social shut in.

I have a formula that can be used to come identify a persons level of

douchebaggery. (or douchous baggamus in Latin)

· number of facebook friends you have that you've actually met in person at least once

divided by:

· number of facebook friends you have in total

To maintain a non-douchebag status, one must never let this number drop below 1.00 The only two ways to achieve this are;

1) you aren't a facebook user at all. This is the only guaranteed way to

avoid douchebaggifcation. (I fall into this category.)

2) you've met/know every single person in your list at least once.

Like shakespeare said;

To facebook is to douche.

Anyone who posts an angry response this must either be a be facebooker

themselves, or at the very least a douchebag sympathizer.